“Down Here We Rely on Fishing and Oil”: Work Identity and Fishers’ Responses to the BP Oil Spill Disaster

Abstract

Survey research on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has documented both short-term and longer term effects of the spill and chemical agents on physical, mental, and environmental health, but less is known about how individuals living in and around affected areas make sense of the oil spill disaster. Prior research on disaster describes how people make sense of these events through social, political, and relational processes, yet have not explored the mediating role that work identity might play in the sense-making process. Using in-depth interviews with Louisiana shrimp fishers, I show how interpretations of the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill and its aftermath are fundamentally grounded in work identity. Findings indicate fishers recognize the role BP played in their ongoing health and environmental problems related to the spill. At the same time, they generally view BP as favorable and hold optimistic views regarding their abilities to continue to fish in grounds where they find evidence of the oil spill. Work identity filters how these fishers make sense of their experience and limits the range of responses available to them. This project, thus, centers work within research on the subjective experience of disaster, and further contributes to understanding the socially constructed nature of disaster perceptions and responses.

Keywords

work identity BP oil spill risk perceptions Louisiana

Introduction

On April 20, 2010, 11 workers died and 17 were injured when the British Petroleum (BP)-owned Deepwater Horizon oilrig exploded 50 miles off Louisiana’s coast. For the next 87 days, oil gushed freely from the sunken well until it was finally declared sealed in mid-September. In the end, more than 210 million gallons of oil spilled out into the ocean. The damage was extensive, particularly for the surrounding communities and people dependent upon coastal resources for income, including Louisiana shrimp fishers (Parks et al. 2018).

Research on the BP oil spill has consistently shown that those with stronger material and cultural attachments to the coast, such as shrimp fishers, have suffered the worst in terms of negative mental health outcomes (Cope and Slack 2017; Gill, Picou, and Ritchie 2012; Grattan et al. 2011; Parks et al. 2019). Indeed, the BP oil spill had immediate consequences for fishers, as it prompted an abrupt shutdown in coastal waters. Not being able to fish, many worked on cleanup efforts sponsored by BP through their Vessels of Opportunity (VoO) program. While this work temporarily stemmed off financial worries for those participating, many became sick from working around the burning oil slicks and the toxic chemicals used in cleanup efforts, most notably, the noxious dispersant called Corexit (Diaz 2011).

Despite evidence of both short-term and longer term effects of the spill and chemical agents on physical and environmental health, we know less about how workers in the Gulf understand the oil spill disaster. Turning to workers’ subjective experiences and perceptions offers insight into the long-term social ramifications of disaster. Research on environmental hazards elaborates how risk perceptions, or the ways that people think about dangers, are linked to behavioral outcomes (Freudenburg 1993). Yet, the mechanisms that contribute to the ways individuals understand risk warrant further attention. In the case of the BP oil spill disaster, meanings attached to work serve as one key mechanism, given the prominence and integration of the fishing and oil industries to Louisiana’s culture and economy (Bishop 2014; Harrison 2012; Priest 2016). More generally, research on work shows how meanings attached to work can constrain or encourage social action (Friedland and Robertson 1990; Harrison 2017; Hodson 2001; Linkon and Russo 2002). How have shrimp fishers fared in the aftermath of the BP oil spill disaster? And, more broadly, how do cultural relationships to work shape perceptions, behaviors, and outcomes related to environmental contamination?

In this article, I answer these questions through analysis of in-depth interviews with 49 shrimp fishers and those connected to the industry. Building upon research on the BP oil spill disaster, the sociology of work, and risk perceptions, I show how the work of both fishing and oil is central to understanding fishers’ post-spill perceptions and experiences. Two key findings illustrate this claim. First, shrimp fishers blamed BP for health problems suffered as a result of working in or around the spill, yet generally held favorable opinions about BP and the oil industry more generally. Second, shrimp fishers indicated that they continued to find evidence of the spill in their fishing grounds, yet all but one fisher believed that the seafood is safe to eat, regularly consumed it, and were optimistic that oil contamination would not be a problem in the future. While these perceptions and actions appear incompatible or irrational, by centering the subjective experience of disaster in this context on work identity—where economic, cultural, and place attachments to labor intersect—we can better understand how these actions are, for these individuals, consistent. Notions of work help to filter sense-making following disaster. Shrimp fishers not only acted in a way that protected their own work identities, they also strongly identified with the oil industry that provided meaningful work to many in their social networks and larger community. This project, thus, contributes to our understanding of the socially constructed nature of environmental contamination and its consequences. Risk intersects with culture and work in important ways, and it is at this intersection that possible forms of action, the kinds of actions that may lead to (or impede) pro-environmental, prosocial, or beneficial outcomes, are developed.

Risk Perceptions and the BP Oil Spill Disaster

Risk Research

The BP oil spill is, to date, the largest accidental marine oil spill in the petroleum industry’s history. The spill occurred after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on the BP-owned Macondo Prospect. The rig was operated by Transocean Ltd., and work on the rig was contracted out to Halliburton. The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling found that cost-cutting measures taken by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean led to the deadly explosion and ensuing spill (Bergin 2011).

This spill represents the toxic contamination that Kai T. Erikson (1994) termed “a new species of trouble” that provokes a fear and uncertainty distinct from natural disasters. Much of the research on toxic contamination focuses on outcomes, such as mental and physical health (Brown et al. 2003; Davidson 2018; Gerrity and Flynn 1997) or economic effects. Researchers have also focused on peoples’ beliefs about contamination, or risk perceptions, particularly as they relate to what people know about threats (O’Connor, Bard, and Fisher 2006) or the trust (or lack thereof) that people have regarding those in charge of protecting the public (Beamish 2001; Freudenburg 1993). While this body of literature is wide-ranging and informative, it is characterized by the tendency to examine risk perceptions as independent variables that act upon social and behavioral outcomes (see Auyero and Swistun 2009:7). Kathleen J. Tierney (2007) argues that disaster research’s bent toward ecological, rather than social, conditions in explanations has steered the field away from sociological concerns related to inequality, diversity, and social change. Subjective understandings of disaster events have often been ignored.

There are, to be sure, a number of important exceptions to this tendency (Kroll-Smith and Couch 1991; Shriver and Kennedy 2005). Notably, Michael Edelstein (2004) definitively shows how social processes and ecohistorical contexts matter to the ways people make sense of toxic exposure through accounting for individuals’ patterns of activities (“lifestyles”) as well as the interpretive frameworks that enable perceptions of “normalcy” in everyday life (“lifescapes”). Valerie J. Gunter, Marilyn Aronoff, and Susan Joel (1999:636) show how two communities experienced toxic contamination differently, and that the difference spun on how “[P]eople receive sensory inputs from their environment, but they interpret these through frames received from family, friends, the mass media, and a variety of other social organizations.” And in their study of a small town polluted by the nearby petrochemical industry, Javier Auyero and Debora Alejandra Swistun (2009) argue that [italics in original]

[k]nowledge about a poisoned environment . . . is not solely shaped by what we see and smell and touch . . . Experience about that polluted reality is . . . socially and politically produced; the meanings of contamination are the outcome of power relations between residents and outside actors. (P. 5)

These studies provide deeper understandings of the various ways that people’s subjectivities shape their experiences following a disaster event. Subjectivities and interpretations mediate how people respond to disasters and other events, setting limits around future behaviors and attitudes. One key factor contributing to how subjectivities form around disaster is work identity. Organizational psychologists bound work identity within employment settings, while acknowledging its multidimensionality (see Kirpal 2004). Sociological conceptualizations are not bounded by the workplace and stretch to account for meanings ascribed to work situated within a broader cultural and social context (Hodson 2001; Lamont 2001). Importantly, work identities are often rooted in place and can reflect the dominant forms of employment that characterize a community (Bell and York 2010; Harrison 2017; Strangleman 2001). For example, Sherry Linkon and John Russo (2002:132–33) note how steel generally provided residents in Youngstown, Ohio, with a strong sense of identity, even for those who didn’t work in steel. “During the heyday of the steel industry,” they note, “representations [of steel] defined work as a source of identity for the community, as well as an activity that created individual identities and a sense of belonging.” Work, thus, comes to define individuals and communities, and these collective identities consist of the economic, cultural, and social attachments people attach to work.

Work identities contribute to the interpretive schemas that help people make collective sense of the world and occur relationally alongside other forms of identity (e.g., family- or place-based identities) and other people, such as coworkers, neighbors, and friends. One way that happens is through setting boundaries that privilege a stable and positive self-image. Giddens (1990:92) termed this “ontological security,” or “the confidence that most human beings have in the continuity of their self-identity and in the constancy of their surrounding social and material environments of action” (Giddens 1990:92). Work identity functions as a mechanism that facilitates the process of achieving stability after events, like disasters, that disrupt or pose threats to work routines embedded in a community.

The connection between subjectivity, work, and interpretation draws attention to the importance of qualitative approaches that center how people make sense of and respond to disaster. Yet, as I next show, the expanding body of literature on the BP oil spill disaster generally follows the trend of overlooking subjective experience in favor of large-scale survey-based research (for exception, see Cherry et al. 2015). This research generally provides valuable insight into broader patterns regarding the psychological, economic, and health impacts of the spill, but we have a much less detailed understanding regarding people’s interpretive understandings of the spill and its aftermath (see Cope et al. 2016). The current study begins to fill this gap. I argue that the key to understanding fishers’ risk perceptions and experiences is through consideration of the ways that the commercial fishing and oil industries are integrated into their subjectivities. In doing so, this study contributes to the literature in two important ways. First, by centering on work identity, I extend research done by Auyero and Swistun (2009) and others who advocate for consideration of individuals’ subjectivities regarding disaster outcomes as well as those factors that shape them (Edelstein 2004). Next, I connect this research to the larger body of research on the BP oil spill that has so far largely ignored subjective experiences of and responses to the spill.

The BP Oil Spill and Legacies of Commercial Fishing and Oil

The commercial fishing and oil industries have long influenced the economic, cultural, and environmental landscapes of coastal communities in Louisiana (Priest 2016). Individuals along the “Cajun Coast,” where the community of study for this research is located, have historically relied on extractive endeavors to make a living, but after World War II, shrimp fishing and oil expanded in prominence together, evolving in “an intimate and complementary relationship” that lasted decades (Priest 2016:490). But as with other communities that have bet their fortunes on maintaining a specific form of industrial production (as with auto, steel, and coal production), oil and fishing have both faltered in recent years, mostly as a result of global competition (Harrison 2012). Steep increases in the volume of cheaper, imported shrimp has weakened Louisiana’s shrimp industry, and the recent decline in oil barrel prices has resulted in the loss of jobs and oil revenue (Harrison 2012). In 2017 alone, for example, the oil and gas industry employed 39 percent fewer people than 2014 employment totals (Scott 2018). State revenue generated by oil has precipitously declined, largely because of tax breaks given to oil by politicians seeking to attract and maintain oil business. For example, former Governor Bobby Jindal lowered income and severance taxes for oil companies, resulting in a loss of about $554 million from 2008 to 2012 (Hochschild 2016:75).

Yet, despite these downturns, oil continues to be an important part of life for many living in Southern Louisiana. These industries have long provided employment opportunities for many communities and as such they serve as important cornerstones upon which Cajun cultural identities are constructed (Bankston and Henry 2002; Harrison 2012; Hochschild 2016). As the sociologists and noted Cajun scholars Anthony V. Margavio et al. (1996:15) state, “For a Cajun the business of life is not a business; it is a living.” They refer here not only to the extractive industries that the earliest settlers developed—logging, fishing, and trapping—but also to the offshore oil industry that in the 1940s became rather seamlessly woven into the fabric of Cajun life. In the same way that logging (Carroll and Lee 1990), mining (Bell and York 2010), and steel (Linkon and Russo 2002) have historically provided communities with a distinct identity, the dominance of fishing and oil contributes a sense of place that influences residents’ political and environmental attitudes (Hochschild 2016). More clearly, people often identify with dominant forms of labor in their communities, even if they do not themselves perform the work of those jobs.

Previous research on oil industry perceptions in Louisiana reflects these attitudes. For example, in their study on Louisiana residents’ attitudes toward offshore oil development, Robert Gramling and William R. Freudenburg (2006) show that

[e]ven if a given individual does not work in the offshore oil industry, that person’s attitudes may be affected by whether or not his/her friends and relatives do . . . By the 1980s or 1990s, it was virtually impossible to live in southern Louisiana and not to know someone who was employed in an oil-related enterprise. (P. 455)

Even though people may not have personal experiences working in these jobs, they still strongly identify with these occupations and the often-difficult and dangerous work that they entail. Arlie Hochschild (2016:210) aptly notes how in Louisiana, “oil has brought pride.” Community identification with these industries is reflected in annual celebrations, such as the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival in Morgan City that remains popular despite the deindustrialization of these industries in recent years (Priest 2016).

Research on the BP oil spill disaster reflects the significance of the commercial fishing and oil industries to shaping outcomes. Studies conducted immediately after the spill indicate higher levels of stress are correlated with respondents’ proximity to damaged areas and economic dependence upon natural resources (Gill et al. 2012; Gill, Picou, and Ritchie 2014; Lee and Blanchard 2012, 2012; Safford et al. 2012). Matthew R. Lee and Troy C. Blanchard (2012) use survey data collected during the spill and find respondents’ stronger levels of community attachment amplified negative mental health impacts. Michael R. Cope et al. (2013) use a third wave of the same survey and find that stronger community attachment was linked to better psychological and physical health outcomes, which suggests that community attachment is a key factor in disaster resiliency. In both articles, individuals from fishing households had pronounced negative health outcomes that researchers attributed to uncertainty related to environmental impacts of the spill and the public’s worsening perceptions of seafood quality and safety.

Other scholars have found that contextual factors related to the spill have a profound effect on the way that people view the world. Bradford H. Bishop (2014) shows that those who live in counties with high commercial dependence upon the oil industry—which are often coastal areas where many commercial fishers live—tended to express strong pro-drilling attitudes after (but not before) the BP oil spill disaster. Lawrence C. Hamilton, Thomas G. Safford, and Jessica D. Ulrich (2012) found that even though Louisiana residents reported being more negatively impacted by the spill when compared with Florida residents, they were generally much more opposed to a moratorium on offshore oil drilling compared with Floridians. Together, this research shows that public opinion reflects regional differences in the ways that coastlines contribute to socioeconomic development. Put more simply, people identify with the prominent forms of work in their communities, and these work identities were integrated into people’s attitudes, behaviors, and preferences.

While the economic and cultural contexts of oil and fishing are important, to date, most of the research on the BP oil spill disaster uses survey data that, while valuable, limits our understanding of the nuanced ways individuals make sense of this disaster (see Mayer, Running, and Bergstrand 2015 for an exception). Social scientists who study the spill have recently recognized the need for qualitative research that includes a sustained focus on interpretive processes and contends with the disruption caused by oil contamination (Cope et al. 2016). Without in-depth research, we risk drawing inaccurate conclusions about the social consequences of disaster that can limit policy makers’ abilities to adequately address disaster victims’ needs. These oversights may also hamper social movement actors’ abilities to mobilize individuals to advocate for social and political changes related to environmental problems facing residents of Southeastern Louisiana, including contamination-related oil and agricultural production and accelerating rates of coastal erosion. These environmental problems are related to the extractive industries that provide people with jobs and livelihoods; as such, to enact changes in environmental policies, it is important to attend to the ways that work shapes how people understand the world and their places within it.

Method

This project is part of a larger project on the working lives of Louisiana shrimp fishers. Initial research took place during the summers of 2006 and 2007, when I interviewed 55 individuals either directly or indirectly connected to the shrimp fishing industry in a Southern Louisiana community that I fictitiously call Bayou Crevette. Initially, research interests involved understanding the variety of ways that fishers were responding to the collapse of the shrimp fishing industry that occurred around 2001 as a result of a steep influx in foreign, farm-raised shrimp into the U.S. market. Findings from this project highlight the cultural importance of the work of shrimp fishing and how both cultural and economic factors shaped individual responses to globalization (Harrison 2012).

During the writing of that project, the BP oil spill disaster happened. In November of 2010, six months after the spill, I returned to the community for a week to follow-up with shrimp fishers and community members regarding the ways that the spill had impacted the industry and community. I conducted in-depth interviews with seven shrimp fishers (many were out working in cleanup efforts at the time) and took field notes regarding the unstructured, informal interviews I conducted with community members at gas stations, restaurants, and other places related to the research trip.

Five years later, I returned to the community, in March 2015. During this time, I conducted in-depth interviews with 18 people connected to the fishing industry. Eight of these interviews were follow-up interviews with individuals who participated in the 2006–2007 research, and three of these individuals were also fishers I interviewed in 2010. In July of 2016, I returned to the field and performed interviews with 27 fishers and individuals connected to the industry (all new to the sample), bringing the total people interviewed in the post-BP spill period to 49 people. Not all of these individuals were fishers; four worked for fishing-related organizations, one former fisher now owned a seafood dock, and five were spouses or family members of fishers. Most participants were located by approaching people as they worked on or around boats docked alongside the bayou. Several were contacted beforehand after I located their names and phone numbers through the websites of fishing-related organizations, or through snowball sampling. The total number of fishers interviewed for this project is 39.

My broader project focuses on the effects of deindustrialization within a particular geographic area in Louisiana. The area of study is relatively racially homogeneous (more than 85 percent white), and the fishing industry in this community—like many others—is male-dominated and particularly racially and ethnically bound. As such, most of the participants were men, and the study includes only five women: two who performed the marketing duties of their shrimp-selling businesses, one former fisher who now worked in a fishing-related organization, and two spouses. Tyler Priest (2016:493) points out the segregated nature of the shrimp fishing industry by documenting how black and African American people have generally been shut out of participation in the industry as owner-operators due largely to overt racism resulting in social and financial exclusion. The Louisiana shrimp fishing industry does include a substantial population of Vietnamese and Vietnamese American workers. This study, unfortunately, does not include this community due, in part, to patterns of segregation that proved challenging to surmount.

This project was overseen by the university’s Institutional Review Board. Before each interview began, I described the general purpose of the research, and informed participants that I would not be using any information that could identify them, including the name of their community. I also told them that they were not obligated to share with me any sensitive information, particularly regarding instances connected to ongoing legal issues related to BP. I obtained verbal consent (on audio) from each participant to digitally record our conversations, and informed them that they could go off the record or stop the recording at any time. I stressed that my primary objective was to understand their experiences with and thoughts about the oil spill, and connected my interest in their work as fishers to my own experiences with living through deindustrialization of the steel industry and recognition of the importance of work. As an example of the work I was doing, I provided those eight individuals who participated in the 2006–2007 research with a copy of the book I wrote, informing each of the pseudonym used for them. I carried a copy of the book with me to share with new participants, and offered to send them a copy upon request.

Interviews were conducted and audio recorded primarily in homes, on boats, and at dockside locations. The interviews consisted of open-ended questions designed to elicit an understanding of their experiences with the spill and the ways that it affected their livelihoods in both the short and longer term, including speculations about the future. Questions also probed their perceptions about BP and the oil industry more generally, and their evaluations of the way that BP handled the spill, including their emotional assessments (i.e., “How do you generally feel about the way BP handled the spill?” “How do you feel about the oil industry more generally?”). Interviews were transcribed by an outside source and systematically coded for themes by the researcher. While I did not use a grounded theory approach (that requires extensive back-and-forth between analysis and the field site), my coding strategy was informed by grounded theory methods in that I engaged in an alternating process of focused coding and memo-writing to refine analytic categorization (see Charmaz [2014]).

My data permit a glimpse into the working lives of shrimp fishers at three time points: before, during, and after the spill. In what follows, I primarily draw upon the data collected in 2015 and 2016. While in 2010, people expressed concern about the way that the spill might endanger their livelihoods and community, data generally reveal the existence of a hopeful optimism regarding potential outcomes. Generally, people averred that it was too soon to tell the extent to which the spill would affect them.

Results

Shrimp fishers’ narratives about both their experiences with the spill and how they currently understood the spill were strikingly similar across the sample. Through analytic coding of transcripts, two primary themes emerged, both pointing toward tensions existing between individuals’ experiences with the oil spill and their perceptions and behaviors. First, unanimously, fishers described suffering health problems during and after cleanup efforts, with many of the illnesses and problems continuing to affect them. Yet, the overwhelming majority (36/39) held positive or optimistic attitudes toward BP. Fishers’ assessments of BP, in particular, are moderated through work identities that reflected the economic and cultural significance of the oil industry in the Gulf. Second, fishers unanimously indicated that the oil spill has had ongoing environmental impacts in the Gulf. Most discussed how they regularly or occasionally found tar balls related to the spill in their nets, and some described seeing evidence of oil contamination in the seafood they caught. Yet, all but one believed the seafood to be safe for consumption, and regularly ate the shrimp they caught. Fishers’ denial of even the possibility that seafood may be contaminated reveals the durability of their identification with the fishing and oil industries. These findings, taken together, reflect the relationship between work identity and the ways that fishers have made sense of the spill.

In what follows, I first detail how in the immediate aftermath of the spill (2010), shrimp fishing and oil-related work identities helped shape how fishers and others made sense of the disaster. Next, I show how work identity, especially as it relates to the cultural and economic importance of the oil industry, alleviated frustration and dissatisfaction related to BP, even when fishers suffered health problems that they attributed to the company. Last, I show how the economic and symbolic importance of shrimp and the related desire to maintain meaningful work identities influenced perceptions of seafood quality and safety and fishers’ own consumption behaviors.

During the Spill

While most of the data were collected at least five years after the spill, I spent one week in Bayou Crevette and surrounding communities approximately six months after it occurred. I hoped to gauge the more immediate effects of such a catastrophic event on this community. These interviews reveal the cultural and economic importance of the seafood and oil industries and the ways that their identification with these industries shaped community members’ perceptions of the ongoing event. Given the extensive damage that the spill had caused and the threats it posed to coastal areas and the livelihoods built upon them, I expected to find that individuals would express worry, anger, and stress related to the spill and to BP’s involvement. Instead, I found that most individuals expressed cautious optimism regarding the health and future of the Gulf and community. Furthermore, most individuals remained relatively positive about BP, despite the perception that BP was responsible for the spill.

For example, when I asked Jacob, a multigenerational trawler in his 40s, if he thought the public perception regarding BP was positive, he said, “Oh yeah. Definitely.” He believed that BP had been generous with compensation so far, but also remarked,

The thing is, either you or your family makes a living from the seafood industry or oil and gas. If you lose the seafood industry, or you lose one of them, you know—it’s a major blow. Even though we had this catastrophe, you still gotta work in the oil industry. It’s a way of life down here. It’s part of the economy, the culture.

Jacob connects his continued support to both its economic and cultural role in the lives of workers and Bayou Crevette generally. Similarly, Curtis, a third-generation shrimp fisher, said, “I’m satisfied with BP” and that the oil spill had not changed his perception of the oil industry. “You still gotta drill,” he remarked. He, too, was optimistic about the future, even while recognizing that the oil had reached nearby fishing grounds. “It’s going to get better,” he said:

I don’t think we’re really gonna have no oil stay. Not from what I see here. But I don’t know what’s on the bottom here, if it’s gonna settle or what. Actually, it probably will because it’s heavy . . . But I think it’ll be fine.

Curtis and Jacob both drew upon notions of work to form their unexpectedly (to an outsider like myself) positive assessments of BP and optimistic views for the future.

After several days of hearing similar sentiments, I came across a tattoo parlor decorated with a mural expressing anger toward BP and the federal government’s response to the spill, including an image of the Grim Reaper labled as BP with the phrase, “You [BP] killed our way of life.” Expecting anger, I instead found the same defense of BP that I had with Jacob and Curtis. Coty, the owner and artist, shared similar sentiments regarding the importance of the oil industry. When asked if the display was anti-oil, he replied, somewhat defensively, “It’s not anti-oil, it’s anti-don’t fuck up!” He described how he erected the display soon after the spill to capture his initial anger and dismay with both BP and the federal response to the spill. Yet, as the weeks and months passed, people stopped into his shop to complain about his protest art as being too hard on BP, and soon his anger weakened. “Down here we rely on fishing and oil,” he said. “Without that we wouldn’t have a culture down here. We wouldn’t have our heritage or anything like that . . . We depend on it.” He had planned to take it all down soon. Coty, along with Curtis and Jacob, mentioned the cultural importance of the oil industry, its connection to their “way of life,” and the jobs it provides to relatives, friends, and community members at large. The cultural, economic, and place-based connections to the work of oil—perhaps policed by friends and fellow community members—helped reshape Coty’s initial impressions of the spill into an attitude that identified with the needs of the oil industry.

Data from the 2010 fieldwork generally indicated that it was too soon to tell how the spill would affect fishers. But shrimpers’ work identity—a tangible loyalty to the oil industry and attachment to the fishing industry—was palpable and resulted in a cautious optimism and would continue to serve as the foundation upon which future perceptions and experiences of the spill would be built.

Five and Six Years after the Spill: Health Consequences Linked to the BP Oil Spill

In the days after the spill, BP developed a program called “Vessels of Opportunity” (VoO) to enlist individuals who owned nautical vessels in cleanup efforts. The goal of these efforts was to capture the oil before it could reach the delicate, vulnerable coastline, which would be devastating for the ecosystem as well as BP’s reputation. Those employed by this program engaged in a variety of cleanup activities, including laying and maintaining oil boom, finding and removing tar balls, burning off oil from the surface, and running supplies for offshore needs. All but three of the participants worked for VoO, regularly exposing them to oil and other contaminants. Ernest Ledet, a third-generation shrimp fisher, noted how “At first when I was with BP, they had a storm coming . . . We were in some 10-foot seas, crossing, and the oil was so thick it calmed the sea down.” Lori Chauvin, who runs the marketing side of a family-run shrimp business, said her husband, who operated the two vessels they owned, told her the oil “was 6 inches thick. You could drop something in it and nothing was going through that oil.”

Crude oil contains a variety of known carcinogens, including benzene and naphthalene (Rotkin-Ellman, Wong, and Solomon 2012; Solomon and Janssen 2010). But the oil itself may not be what poses the greatest risk to people and the ecosystem. To prevent the oil from reaching the delicate ecosystem along the coastline, BP used a controversial and highly toxic product called Corexit to disperse the oil. Corexit dispersants break up oil slicks into millions of tiny droplets that then sink to the ocean floor, where it remains. Thus, it is effective for keeping oil from moving inshore where it can pollute beaches and the humans and wildlife that inhabit or use these areas. Because the oil remained out of sight, BP sought to ensure that it also stayed out-of-mind. Between April and July of 2010, BP spent $93.5 million on advertising designed to minimize the oil’s impact on affected communities, a figure that was three times more than what they spent the previous year during that time (Schuller and Maldonado 2016).

Due to its toxicity, Corexit is banned in the United Kingdom and other countries, but in the United States, it continues to be used as a first line of defense in oil spills and was used extensively in the Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) (Ott 2008), even though less toxic dispersants exist. Studies have shown that when oil and Corexit are mixed, the blend is roughly 52 times more toxic than oil alone (Rico-Martínez, Snell, and Shearer 2012). Corexit is linked to a host of health problems including skin, respiratory, and nervous system disorders as well as cancer (Ott 2008). Furthermore, studies have shown that Corexit slows the growth of oil-eating bacteria that naturally remove oil from the Gulf (Kleindienst et al. 2015).

Indeed, all of the fishers I spoke with talked about the harmful and lasting health effects of Corexit. They reported that despite the product’s known harmfulness, BP failed to provide them with respirators or other adequate forms of protection. Fishers also reported that neither BP nor anyone else briefed them on the toxicity of the product. Lori’s husband and two sons worked in cleanup efforts. “They really wanted to do something to help, never realizing just how bad this stuff was,” she said. “[BP] never told anybody. They never even gave us HazMat suits.” While Lori’s husband worked primarily in transporting workers and supplies to unaffected areas, her sons worked in the oil-affected areas. “My boys have been sick, some of the guys that have worked on it have been sick with like bronchitis, breathing issues and stuff like that.” Similarly, J.T. Robicheaux, a second-generation fisher, remarked that “[BP] never provided any respirators. I think the reason for that is if they give everybody respirators, then it would be in the news and people would think it’s bad.” He also described how he experienced health problems while working the cleanup. “Some days were worse than others. At first, we weren’t getting any headaches or anything, but . . . [eventually] we started getting headaches and a little bit of nosebleeds. After a while, the headache was constant.”

Other fishers also spoke about BP’s negligence and their ensuing health problems. In addition to the lack of protective gear, they also reported that BP did not tell them about the risks associated with Corexit, nor did they know that they would be sprayed so that they could take their own precautions. Fishers reported that BP sprayed Corexit from airplanes and that sometimes it happened at night. Daniel, a fourth-generation fisher, said,

We’d go look all around and wherever we find the oil, [BP would say] this is where we have to come sleep at night. And we’d go back the next day and you could tell it was sprayed for miles . . . It stunk . . . It was nauseating, that smell.

J.T.’s account of the spill is similar. “They were spraying at night,” he said. “We’d see them in the late afternoons, the planes flying out. But at night when we would put down anchor, we could hear and see them sometimes flying overhead.”

Jacob is a multigenerational fisher who worked on a burn crew for VoO. He reported that BP sprayed Corexit both day and night. And they weren’t supposed to spray within our proximity. I think a two-mile radius was what they had to stay away from anyone. Well there was times when I videoed them and they were passing three-hundred feet from me spraying.

In addition, he reported that BP used Corexit in other ways. “As the oil was coming out [of the well], they were injecting it into the oil . . . We burned oil good for about two months and then the oil became like a tea on the water because it was so dispersed with Corexit.” I asked Jacob if he knew how toxic Corexit was when he was working so close to the well. “They always said it was safe. There was [name deleted], you know her? She works for [company name deleted]? She was trying to get respirators to the guys who were burning out there and BP didn’t want them.” When asked why BP did not provide protection, he responded, “Well it was kind of like an admitting guilt type thing, them allowing us to use respirators out there burning.” Donny, a lifelong trawler, similarly said, “They didn’t tell us anything. They said it was soap they were spraying. Yeah, and no respirators, nothing.”

The health problems associated with working around the spill are numerous and have become so ubiquitous that they have become known as “BP Syndrome” (Devine and Devine 2015). Some of the related health problems include migraines, exhaustion and loss of stamina for routine activities, respiratory system and nervous system damage, seizures, skin lesions throughout the body, and neurological damage resulting in severe IQ loss and memory loss. Fishers in my sample experienced a variety of these problems.

Most significantly, when I spoke with Donny, he had recently finished chemotherapy treatment for cancer that he was diagnosed with after the spill and that he attributes to it. Donny worked alongside Jacob on the burn crew, and said that he first got sick during the initial few months:

Everybody said I was faking it. They flew me in on a helicopter to [location withheld] . . . And then the whole time, I was sick sick, and all at once I got that cancer. And Steve got cancer, and a few people got cancer.

Glen, a lifelong trawler who was interviewed for the original project on the import crisis, was among these fishers. While Glen did not work directly in the spill, Donny reported that his boat was used and became contaminated with Corexit:

He had a guy running the boat, but he would go in the boat all the time. And he had cancer . . . He did the treatments and all . . . they sent him to [name withheld]. Then they sent him home and told him they couldn’t [do] anything for him anymore more . . . And two, three weeks later he was dead.

Robert noted that “There are people dying like I’ve never seen before in my life. There’s cancer like crazy down here.” Medical research has, indeed, begun to show that cleanup workers are at an increased risk of getting cancer and leukemia (D’Andrea and Reddy 2013).

Fishers spoke of other health problems they attributed to the spill. J.T. described how he experienced extreme fatigue and memory loss:

I would wake up dead tired. This was like a year after the BP spill . . . I always had this fog in my brain too. I would come to work and forget what I had to do. I had to write everything down. It was so bad.

Daniel spoke about how he and others he knew experienced problems with blood pressure and bloodwork. “My blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, and all kinds of stuff was off the charts . . . Ever since then, I don’t feel right.” Phillip described being diagnosed with a blood disease two years after the spill that required him to wear a medical device. He recounted an incident where he lost consciousness in public as a result of the disease. “I died almost 3 times,” he said. “That’s what the doctors told me. I didn’t feel nothing. I was talking to all these people just like I’m talking to y’all, and that’s what saved my life.” Jacob noted that “After the spill for a while, I struggled with respiratory colds all the time and that’s not typical of me.”

Health problems were not isolated to those fishers who worked in cleanup efforts. Those who did not work for BP also reported health problems. Louie explained how when the waters were opened to fishing in August, he trawled immediately west of affected areas, where he experienced Corexit contamination. “When I first got that dispersant on me, it was taking the skin off of me. I had scars all over me where it took the skin off. It was just eating the skin . . . I’ve got breathing problems. It’s all from that.” Another fisher, Michael, described suffering from similar problems after he went out trawling when the fishing grounds finally opened. “That dispersant, we got it all over us. I got scars. I can show you in the light where it took the skin off. See, it just ate the skin.” Robert, who owned a seafood dock, said that during the spill, when the waters were shut down, he would “try to stay out of here as much as we could because every time we came back over here we would get sick. Cough, cough, cough. You would leave here and within an hour of leaving you would never cough again.”

Over five years after the spill, shrimp fishers unanimously reported ongoing health problems that they link to BP’s negligence regarding the spill and cleanup efforts. While we might expect this blame to translate into anger, stress, and distrust directed toward BP, many fishers spoke positively of BP. For example, Ernest described how his boat incurred $47,000 worth of damage for which he was not compensated. But when I asked him if he had any animosity toward BP, he responded, “No, it happens. Things happen. I have no animosity towards them whatsoever.” Similarly, minutes after showing me the medical device he wore on his chest for the blood disorder he attributed to working in Corexit, Phillip said, “I love BP.” Asked to elaborate, he cited the compensation he received for his work with VoO and further elaborated that for the community, “[BP] is everything. They take care of the stores, the gas stations, and us. You name it . . . The oil field is top dog.” Robert, the dock owner, complained that “what pissed me off about BP was they didn’t even try to pick up the oil. All they wanted to do was sink it to the bottom.” But when I asked if he was upset with BP, he replied, “I’m more angry at the government than I am at BP.” He elaborated that “They allowed BP to spray [Corexit] . . . I blame the Obama Administration for letting that happen.” Robert’s answer reflected his identification with the work of oil; he deflected his anger away from BP and toward a more culturally appropriate and common target of ire among generally politically conservative Cajun folks: the government and the Democratic president.

Harry is a fourth-generation trawler who worked for VoO. While he did not currently experience health problems, he said that during the spill, he had rashes from the Corexit, and that of the people whom he knew that worked in the spill, “a couple of them caught cancer and breathing problems and rashes and things like that.” When asked about how he felt BP handled the spill, he said, “I think they did the best they could with what they had.” I replied, “So, do you have any anger toward them?” to which he replied, “No, no. Not anger.” When I asked why so many fishers cited health problems or frustrations with how they were treated during the spill, yet continued to be forgiving and supportive of the company, he replied,

I’m going to tell you why. Look, we live with the oil fields. My whole life we’ve had oil fields . . . This is part of the way we live here. We deal with them all the time, so we do compromise with them because we know we have to have fossil fuel. What else are we going to run our vessels on? We are using the same fuel they’re making. So, we have this love/hate relationship. It’s going to happen. We have to have it. Our community depends on it. Our way of life depends on it. So, to say that we don’t want fossil fuel and we think the oil is bad, you just can’t do that. There’s no way . . . And, a lot of our family members and friends work for the oil companies. You’ve got to have it.

Harry’s statement reveals the intertwined nature of oil, fishing, and family as sources of collective identity for bayou residents. As Coty learned after receiving complaints about his visual critique of BP after the spill, “you just can’t” think that oil is bad. To do so would be to align oneself against the interests of the community.

Despite connecting health problems to BP’s negligence to provide them with safety precautions during cleanup efforts, fishers felt generally positive in their evaluations of the oil company. Indeed, fishers report being well-paid for their work on the VoO project, but they contextualize their support for BP using explanations that reach beyond merely economics. Fishing and oil—and the many businesses designed to support them—provide opportunities to make a living, and a feeling of pride, and a sense of purpose. The industries are tightly interwoven into the fabric of the community and are integrated with how people understand the world. Respondents reported a collective sense of importance of these industries and described how they contribute to a “way of life” through providing work as well as a sense of self.

Next, I show how work identity shapes shrimp fishers’ reports and perceptions of seafood itself. Despite reporting that some of the shrimp and other forms of sea life they encounter show signs of oil contamination, most shrimp fishers believed that the seafood is safe for personal consumption and for commercial sale, and regularly consumed it and fed it to their families. These interpretations demonstrate the way that a host of factors—including cultural and economic ones related to work—contributes to the way that people make sense of disaster-related outcomes, and how they structure their lives afterward.

After the Spill: Perceptions and Behaviors around Seafood Quality

Ernest trawls on a 70-foot boat that he named after his daughter. He was among the first fishers hired with VoO and was given a leadership position. When I asked if he noticed any lingering effects from the spill, he said,

The only thing I’m finding is that we cull shrimp and we break the heads on the shrimp a lot. We usually get the fat contents all over our gloves when they break . . . Now, when we break heads on the shrimp, it’s oil contents we find on the rubber gloves.

As he spoke, he took a pair of his white, rubber gloves, and demonstrated the motion of popping shrimp heads:

I’ve never seen that before in my life. And under the gills of the shrimp, like in the very fine hairs, you can see the oil in there . . . We used to wash [our gloves] and put them away. Now, you just can’t wash the black off of them. It’s oil residue.

Given that Corexit sank tens of thousands of gallons of oil to the ocean floor, it was unsurprising to hear that fishers sometimes found evidence of contamination in their catch. What was surprising, however, was Ernest’s follow-up. “Taste wise,” he said, “I don’t find any difference in the taste of the shrimp, but I know there’s oil in those gills.” “So you eat it?” I asked quizzically. He replied:

Yeah, I do. It’s good stuff! But after we peel them I wash them real good in the sink in the lavatory (on the boat). It’s some pretty white meat after it’s done. Now, what it absorbed in its body, I don’t know. I eat it. I have no problem with it. It’s still good.

Ernest never entertained the notion that the shrimp might be contaminated.

This was a common theme emerging from the 2015–2016 interviews. I asked J.T. if he ever caught shrimp that showed evidence of oil contamination. “At first, I saw a few,” he replied:

In the beginning, a little bit of shrimp had oil in the gills . . . You know what it is now, eventually nature takes over and it hardens up the oil and turns it to tar balls. So, you don’t really catch oil anymore, you catch tar balls.

He explained that during the days and weeks immediately following the spill, he didn’t eat the shrimp he caught in the waters where fishers were permitted to trawl because he was uncertain. But “lately,” he said, “I eat it just like normal.” A fisher named Thomas, who was selling his shrimp in front of his house along the bayou, said,

I think it has an effect on the water, the dispersant did . . . I don’t care how big is the ocean. If you take an aquarium, and you put a certain kind of dispersant—it’s not the oil. Because we lived around oil all our life here. It’s that dispersant. That’s a poison . . . I’m sure you gonna kill the fish.

But, he replied, “of course” the shrimp was safe to eat now, and remarked that he ate it all the time with no worries.

Importantly, I make no claims in this research that Gulf seafood is unsafe to eat. Responsibility for determining and managing seafood safety is divided between the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and state agencies. These agencies regularly test and monitor seafood quality and have consistently determined Gulf seafood safe for consumption (see also Wickliffe et al. 2018). Nevertheless, some health experts have critiqued the methods employed for testing seafood quality (Rotkin-Ellman et al. 2012) and have called for testing procedures that include a broader range of contaminants than what are accounted for by present methods (Gohlke et al. 2011). Rather, the analytic assessment of shrimp fishers’ insistence that shrimp is safe—despite what they observe with their own senses—reflects their desire to maintain a sense of continuity with regard to the ways they make a living. In this case, work identities associated with oil limit the range of possibilities for how fishers consider the effect of the spill on the Gulf ecosystem and their own behaviors around it. Here, I focus on what fishers said, but perhaps equally notable is what they generally did not mention—the mere possibility that they should not eat or sell seafood. To do so would not only implicate their own abilities to continue fishing, it would also necessitate a critical perspective of the oil industry. In this way, fishers draw upon identities grounded in work to construct a form of denial that enables them to preserve a stable sense of self, or their ontological security (Giddens 1990; see Norgaard 2011).

Other fishers similarly reported occasionally catching tar balls and other suspicious-looking sea creatures, but generally thought the seafood was safe and regularly ate it. During my conversation with Jacob, he boiled up some of his latest catch for us to share while we talked:

I’ve caught some funny looking things that I turned in [to the FDA]. I caught a sheep head [a type of fish] with some tumors on it. I haven’t seen anything in the last couple of years. But I caught a couple of funny looking shrimp. Who knows if that’s from [the oil spill]. It could have been just the position they got in when they molted and re-hardened, but the picker was straight up on its head. It looked like a unicorn. Yeah, that was funny. And then I had some that had some black in between the shell.

Jacob’s uncertainty regarding the cause of anomalies leaves open the possibility that the oil spill has had lasting effects on the seafood, but he never entertained the possibility.

Daniel noted that ongoing contamination of a nearby beach area, common for trawling, was likely. “I’m sure if you dig two or three feet down at [beach name withheld], I bet you get a sheen of oil that comes out. I would think the sand is porous and everything just seeps through.” I next asked, “Is it safe to swim in? At the beach?” Daniel replied, “I don’t worry about it. Louisiana has so many other chemicals coming down that river. Louisiana is just a dump site of the United States.”

Only two fishers mentioned the possibility that the oil spill had jeopardized the safety of seafood. One fisher, a 75-year-old lifelong trawler named Pete, only mentioned this possibility to dismiss it. “We ate shrimp when the oil spilled . . . I was talking to a guy today who said the shrimp was stinky and full of oil. I said to myself, ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’” The other fisher, Albert, was the only fisher to admit that he thought the seafood was unsafe. “I’ve seen some seafood with tumors on it. I got pictures in my phone of shrimp with tumors. And you never seen that before [the spill].” At the time, he no longer fished in the local waters where he worked for his entire life. Now, he traveled farther west to catch shrimp, far beyond where the oil flowed. This is the only shrimp that he felt safe to eat or sell. While traveling farther distances to fish increased fuel and other costs associated fishing, he was willing to make this trade-off. “Don’t let BP tell you that the Gulf is safe, it’s not . . . The oil is right there at the bottom . . . Come on, when are you going to wake up? It’s still there.”

Without an in-depth exploration of people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors following the spill, we might assume Albert to be the rule, rather than the exception. After all, every fisher admitted that oil is at the bottom of the Gulf because of Corexit, but they normalized it in a way that allowed them to maintain their way of life. Fishers, then, responded to the spill much the same way that Nordic citizens responded to climate change (Norgaard 2011) and that some residents of an Argentine shantytown responded to toxic contamination (Auyero and Swistun 2009): by trying to protect themselves from threats to their ways of life. In this study, I show how the mechanisms through which this occurs are rooted in the meanings and the dignity of work on the bayou.

Conclusion

For shrimp fishers in Louisiana, work identity connected to the oil and shrimp-fishing industries shaped their thoughts, attitudes, and actions following the BP oil spill disaster. Even though the spill—and the threat of future disaster events related to the oil industry—threatens their livelihoods, most fishers who participated in this study have, at least for the time being, made peace with the spill and with BP, even though they directly blame the company for their own post-spill problems. Fishers desire the ability to continue to maintain their identities as fishers, and for oil to continue to provide work to their friends, family members, and the economic vibrancy of their community as a whole. In short, they draw upon notions of work to minimize the disruption caused by the spill.

Through pursuing shrimp fishers’ subjective understandings of the spill, I show that work identity mitigates assessments in unexpected ways. Fishers blame BP’s negligence to provide safety precautions during cleanup efforts for the many health problems they suffered and continue to experience, yet generally express satisfaction with BP as a whole. Fishers also described how they continued to find evidence of oil contamination in some seafood and in their fishing grounds more generally, yet regularly consume it and believe it to be uncontaminated. While these beliefs and behaviors might appear contradictory to outsiders or casual observers, when we account for the importance of work and what it means to fishers and their communities, their actions make sense.

By moving beyond the health-related and attitudinal survey approach, this research contributes a much-needed understanding of the socially constructed nature of perceptions and responses within the context of the BP Oil spill disaster and in general. In addition, this research extends recent work in environmental sociology that advocates the inclusion of emotions and cognitive understandings in understanding why people engage in denial or social movement nonparticipation regarding ongoing environmental problems such as global warming (Norgaard 2011) and toxic contamination of water, air, and soil (Auyero and Swistun 2009). Denial, acquiescence, and nonparticipation in movement activity are sometimes common ways that individuals respond to environmental hazards, but these do not mean that people do not care about health and well-being of self, family, community, and environment. Rather, these direct our attention to the ways that perceptions of environmental hazards are products of identities, place-based routines, and histories and subject to manipulation by powerful actors and institutions. Without understanding the role that culture, place, and work play in shaping how individuals perceive and frame disasters, we will not be able to fully understand the factors leading to inaction, the reservation of blame, or general denial of the long-term environmental effects of corporate polluters. As climate change and other events associated with the risk society intensify as threats, future research should continue to focus on individuals’ subjectivities as a key site for facilitating attitudes and behaviors that can mitigate hazards and facilitate positive outcomes.

A top-down, macro-oriented approach, while informative about broader social patterns and conditions, has implications for how ecological disasters are addressed. Much of the existing research tends to treat disasters as individual events with distinct periods of onset, emergency, and recovery (Tierney 2007) rather than as ongoing social processes rooted in an existing social order. Such an understanding is mirrored by media campaigns sponsored by BP that depict the spill as having happened and been resolved: The oil is gone from plain view, people have been paid for their losses, and business is back to normal for the Gulf and affected communities. Campaigns such as these shape public opinion of disasters and awareness (or lack thereof) of ongoing problems. Sociologists are well-situated to extend this toolkit to more fully engage the ecological, social, and cultural implications of disaster processes, including lingering outcomes. This study is largely descriptive and based upon a relatively small and homogeneous sample, but by amplifying the voices of shrimp fishers in Louisiana, we are better positioned to understand the complicated and often contradictory ways that people interpret and respond to events, such as disasters, that pose threats to one’s sense of self and community.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Ryan Light, Tim Haney, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this draft.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biography

Jill Ann Harrison is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. She received her BA in sociology from Youngstown State University and her PhD in sociology from Ohio State University. Her research focuses on the local effects of globalization, deindustrialization, and environmental change. Within the broader frames of sociology of work and place, she has studied revitalization in Rust Belt communities and deindustrialization in bayou communities to probe the connections between work, place, and identity. Her research has been published in American Sociological Review, Social Forces, City and Community, and Social Currents.

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